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User blog:Whovian39/Summary Of Research: July 2009
Hey, you may know i just had a weeks holiday but I'm back now and I'm not empty handed. Just because i had no internet connection doesn't mean i couldn't do anything! I've wrote a Ren style summary of all research of the past month! I may do this again - maybe not regularly but when i feel we have found some good research i will write one up! And sorry the pictures aren't the same size it's just the wiki likes to change the size when i upload them! Anyway, enjoy! Also if you don't want to read it all just skip to the bottom where i have done a 25 bullet summary. Summary of research July Ok here on the Jagex wiki we cover a wide range of Jagex software and sites so I’m going to start at the beginning with Andrew Gower. 7 years old Ok well Andrew Gower was 7 when he first started making games and has been doing it since. Little is known about his previous games, even Ren didn’t know. My aim over the next year is to find out some of these games and I hope I manage it. Not much else can be said there as there is nothing else we know! Cunning and devious games He then later on went on to create his own site cunninganddeviousgames.com! Over about 6 years he made Parallax painter (the original version of vertigo which weirdly was 2d – if you hold down shift while playing vertigo 2 you get a rough idea what it was like), Parallax painter demo (this was basically parallax painter only with parts of the game removed like the fact there were only a few levels and multiplayer levels and certain letters you were unable to type in the level code part so you couldn’t get onto further levels), Destruction imminent (actually quite a fun game, lots of levels, quite hard, reasonable graphics for its time), Destruction imminent demo (instead of just being parts of the game this demo was a new level which was compiled from the rest of the full version – again quite fun but annoyingly hard), Battle zone (not the kind of game I enjoy but well put together, a basic worms clone), Grinders (still don’t know much about this one – have one or two pictures here and there and I think we have it’s description, I think it’s some sort of avoid the objects game), DeviousMUD alpha (never released to the public but talked about on Andrews personal site) and DeviousMUD beta (basically the beta of the alpha – this eventually went on to become RuneScape). Interestingly all the games mentioned were made by Andrew Gower, Paul Gower (his brother) and their friends. This was all around 1995 to 1999. Andrews other software At the same time as running cunning and devious (and for a little while after he made Jagex) Andrew Gower was still making his own software (completely by himself) on his site. The current things we know of were CunningMOD (a strange sound library thing), Fractal overload (some thing that zooms in on colours or something) and Fireworks (a screensaver he made himself). All very interesting. GamesDomain After that he started up Jagex which at that time was based on making games for other companies. The main one Jagex worked for was GamesDomain, they made lots of games and helped out around the site by writing reviews and helping advertise. They helped set up one of its main features the GamesDomain castle (which for some reason, along with two other games had its name changed! It’s name was changed from castle GamesDomain to Games Domain Castle which was pretty pointless and without reason). The games Jagex made for them were either single player ones that featured one their own or multiplayer ones that all featured in the GamesDomain Castle. The Jagex games in the castle were Chess, Battle cruisers (basically battleships), Battlethingz (a game where you create a monster and battle it with others), Cyber wars (a pretty unique game involving mechs – possibly related to mechscape or steel sentinels), Checkers, Quad-link (tetralink, four in a row), Mahjong (A classic Chinese game apparently), Mystery monster (basically guess who only with monsters), Reversi (re-made as Runeversi in Burthorpe games room), Pairs (bit like 36 card trick), Treasure crypt (A game where you explore a crypt with your friends – it was one of the games that had a random name change. Its old name was just crypt) and Dungeon explorer (the other that had its name change from Dungeon – Its game play is exactly the same as Dungeon Assault on FunOrb)! The single player ones were Vertigo (re-made from parallax painter), Flea circus (Divided into easy, medium and difficult – Later re-made on FunOrb), Outpost 31 (divided into the outpost and the caverns – a spaceship game), Monkey Puzzle (later re-made on FunOrb), Speed Trial (a car racing game paired with motor trial), Goldmine (this one had cheats on it from the bottomless pit whereas the later model of this game didn’t), Fuel Critical (a spaceship game where you’re low on fuel – divided into mars moon and earth), Motor Trial (a motorbike racing game paired with speed trial) and meteoroids (also used to be called something else – meteors – I’m going to add that to the wiki later). Interestingly there was also a game called draughts which was up for one day and was then removed. Draughts was made and copyrighted by Jagex and as far as we can tell it was the same game play as checkers. Interestingly the page layout for the draughts page was different and there were no links to it on the rest of the site. Other games Jagex made for other companies As I mentioned before at this time Jagex weren’t just producing games for GamesDomain, they were also producing games for other sites. They created Funbug Racing (a care racing game where you could win real life money) for Funbug.com. They created Safaria for a site called Planetg-hop which we know little about. And they created Round the pole for a site called Club18-30. Although in actual fact club18-30 was a holiday agents which a site called Targair created for them and then started spending their money on unnecessary things such as Round the pole. Interestingly at this time the only Jagex owned games were meltdown and meteoroids and they also owned the bottomless pit. In fact that was the second version of the bottomless pit because just before they started working for GamesDomain they made the first version which was mentioned on Andrew Gower’ first site. They then re-made it wit cheats and a spinning motion and that is the second version that was on around this time. This and the games domain games were all around 1999 to 2000 Jagex’s own games Then after a while Jagex started making games for their own site in 2001. They made a new multiplayer suite which featured tetralink, warships, checkers, chess, Reversi, Go-mad (based on a popular board game called Go), Backgammon and Slimewar (recently re-made on FunOrb as virogrid and ataxtix)! They also had meltdown (still), vertigo (redesigned slightly), Monkey puzzle, Flea circus (not broken up), Goldmine (without cheats and now with an all new scoreboard) and fuel critical (this time just broken into stage 1, stage 2 and stage 3). They also still had the bottomless pit (second version) and they had their all new game… RuneScape! I will talk about this a bit later. Sometime in 2005 all multiplayer games were deleted (bar RuneScape obviously) and Jagex promised they would be back (most of them were re-made on FunOrb or in RuneScape’s Burthorpe games room). Since then they have been deleting the rest of the single player games or the links to them and now only vertigo is left although that too has been re-made on FunOrb. Side Projects Now if you don’t mind I’d like to sidetrack here a little. Unbelievably even while running Jagex and RuneScape Andrew Gower was still working on something else. He was working on the CastCE emulator which runs games on a pocket PC. Him and a man called Ludovic Olivencia had been working on a program called CastawayPC a little while back (they weren’t the main creators they were just like assistants in it they did so little they probably hardly even noticed they’d done it lol). Now Andrew and Ludovic looked back at this project in and around 2000 and thought hey this was actually a pretty good thing so they re-made it into castCE! Now this was up until 2008 and they re-made it 3 times (not including CastawayPC). These were CastCE, CastCE version 1.01 and CastCE 1.02. After that they finished it and deleted it in 2008. They have not mentioned it since. Its website was called Pocket infinity. Anyway as you’ll have noticed this says side projects as in plural. The other side project I was recently told about by Ren (mechscape world leader). Apparently Andrew once told Ren that he had once worked on a Gba 3d rendering engine. There is no proof of it and we don’t even know if it was ever completed but we can search it up anyway. RuneScape Ok well we all know what RuneScape is but there are a few interesting facts out there not covered by the RuneScape wiki. For example its history it started as DeviousMUD (alpha) and then DeviousMUD (Beta) then RuneScape classic (alpha) then RuneScape classic (beta) then RuneScape 2 (alpha) then RuneScape 2 (beta) then there was the members only RuneScape HD (beta) and then the full RuneScape HD. Interestingly when it was DeviousMUD it had a brother program CunningMOD. Another interesting fact is the Burthorpe games room which has many re-made old Jagex games. And a final very important point is that in 2010 it will be merged with a new Jagex game that is unnamed but fans are calling ThirdScape. More on that later. FunOrb We all know FunOrb. It’s a mini-games site (and technically a game in its own right) mostly covered by the FunOrb wiki. Many people think it was based on FunBug (the site Jagex made funbug racing for) It has deleted a few games which we have to make the pages on. These deleted games were the kickabout betas (members and moderators) and Ataxtix. They have also many re-made Jagex games on their along with new ones the full list is 36 Card Trick (possibly a pairs re-make), Arcanists (a possible worms/Battlezone and battlethingz re-make) This site also hosts the orb downloads feature which has many wallpapers, icons, music and in-game features which you can buy with orb coins the online currency you can get from the FunOrb games. There are also many future FunOrb games we cover! These are Steel sentinels (first mentioned in the forums and then in orb downloads), Pirate empires (mentioned in multiple places including the forums and orb downloads), FunOrb central (mentioned in multiple development diaries and the forums), Bachelor fridge (copyrighted by jagex and mentioned on the forums), Dungeon assault 2 (mentioned in orb downloads and a few development diaries) and the unnamed upcoming funorb game (most likely to be steel sentinels). Jagex have also copyrighted infinite dungeon and never ending dungeon which may be related to FunOrb and possibly a re-make of the bottomless pit or some relation to Dungeon assault or Dungeon assault 2. StellarDawn.com also redirects to FunOrb however mod korpz (head of FunOrb) told me he didn’t know of it as a FunOrb project. Another interesting point is the joke on the FunOrb forums last April fools day which said there would be a new game called Run escape – a play on RuneScape! MechScape Ok well MechScape has its own wiki but that doesn’t mean that we have nothing to do. It’s our job to find links to old games, new games and possible links to future games! Now I’m starting with links to old games, the only possible link I can see other than all the re-makes of RuneScape (obviously linked through the names) is Cyber wars. Now cyber wars was a 2d game that involved blasting mechs. MechScape is a 3d futuristic game involving mechs. A pretty small link but there is rumour that some of the graphics of MechScape are based on cyber wars. This might not be true but the chances are it’s worth listening to. Now onto current games, again there are few links here and the only one I can think of is RuneScape because of the name, the fact they have music and the concept art is very similar to that of RuneScape’s. However Jagex have said their aim for MechScape for it not to just be RuneScape in space so I doubt it will be like RuneScape. Finally onto the interesting part, future games! There are many future games it could be related to. For example it could be related to steel sentinels (an upcoming game on FunOrb) which also involves mechs and robots. Many people are thinking this may even be the beta for MechScape however this is just rumour. It could also be related to the upcoming FunOrb game that featured on the orb downloads section earlier this year. However since that is an upcoming FunOrb game I doubt it would be related. It could also be related to VegaScape or StellarDawn (more on them in a little while) which are registered websites made by Jagex which we don’t know what are and since MechScape is the working title and lots of changes have been made to StellarDawn and MechScape so personally I think MechScape is StellarDawn however I wouldn’t go by what I think if I were you. However I do think that MechScape is coming soon as more pieces of concept art, information and music are being given to mechscapeworld after months of them not being given anything! It also is possible that it is related to force fighter and space combat which featured on the Jagex mock up by John Sim. It may be related as the mock up also listed Fun orbs before FunOrb was released so who knows whether space combat and force fighter are real or not. However Jagex also talked about a non-existent reward Jagex won so not all can be believed that the mock up says. ThirdScape Note: ThirdScape is just the name given to this game by fans and the picture is also by fans. Now onto ThirdScape, this was going to be Jagex’s game for 2010 however recently Jagex said in an interview that ThirdScape will now be merged with RuneScape as they tied in so well together. So why have we still got a page on it? Well we don’t know how far it will be merged with RuneScape, it may be like the games domain castle where there were lots of different multiplayer games all in one server or it may just be like a mini-game in RuneScape – We just don’t know until it comes out! And for that reason we are keeping the ThirdScape page until we have evidence that shows different! There is nothing else really to say about ThirdScape at the present time. StellarDawn Now we have StellarDawn, a project completely exclusive to the Jagex Wiki at the moment! StellarDawn.com was bought by Jagex a long time ago and for a while just came up as error 404 however after a while they redirected it to FunOrb. After a while they copyrighted it (twice!) and then they copyrighted two pictures (one above and the other a lighter version of the one above). Recently (July 20th to be precise) Jagex edited StellarDawn.com and it was a strange mix between the RuneScape and FunOrb sites. It was quickly removed and since then Jagex hasn’t mentioned it. I spoke to mod korpz a little while ago and I asked him if it was a joke and he said “I don’t know” and “I’m not aware of it as a FunOrb project” and he’s the head of FunOrb so he’d know! Very peculiar. Personally I think StellarDawn is MechScape! Other points of interest Ok well there’s VegaScape, another site Jagex bought up, this time redirected to RuneScape for some reason. I think it’s a joke because the name sounds like a joke to me and little has happened related to it. Other than the fact Jagex registered the site nothing has happened at all! No copyrights or anything! Another point of interest is of course the Jagex Mock up which lists the games as RuneScape, Fun orbs, Space combat and force fighter. This is interesting as it mentioned FunOrb and FunOrb hadn’t been released at that time and Space Combat and Force fighter haven’t been released – perhaps working titles for MechScape and ThirdScape. However not all of what the mock up says is true as it also mentioned a non-existent award Jagex won and a free sledge if you signed up to RuneScape and Force Fighter. 25 Summarising Points *Andrew Gower has been making games since he was 7, we need to find a lot more about the games he made then! *He then set up Cunning and devious games which had 7 games – Parallax painter, Parallax painter demo, Destruction imminent, Destruction imminent demo, Grinders, Battle zone, DeviousMUD alpha (never released publicly) and DeviousMUD beta. *He was also working on other projects at that time, these were CunningMOD, the fireworks screensaver and fractal overload! *He then set up Jagex and made games for other sites. *One of the main sites he made games for was Games Domain, not only did he make games but he also helped with reviews and other things like that. *He helped set up the games domain castle which became a big feature on the site as well as quite a few single player games. *Some of the games were re-named for no particular reason! *A strange game appeared on Games Domain for one day – it was made by Jagex but was never advertised as it was only on for a day. *Other games Jagex made at that time for other countries were Funbug racing for the funbug site, safaria for planetg-hop and round the pole for club18-30. *Jagex started making their own games around 2001 including a re-make of DeviousMUD called RuneScape! *Around 2005 Jagex deleted all of their multiplayer games bar RuneScape promising they’d be back soon. *Slowly they deleted the single player ones one by one! *While they were doing this Andrew Gower was working on a project called CastCE, an emulator (something that runs games). *This was a re-make of a previous project he had briefly worked on called Castaway PC. *Meanwhile RuneScape became Jagex’s main game that grew and grew for quite a few years. *Jagex made a games room on RuneScape which featured quite a few re-makes of old Jagex games. *Jagex created FunOrb – a mini games site for people with RuneScape accounts (although you could play without an account). *FunOrbs games include many re-makes and new games, the full list is 36 card trick, Arcanists, *Many future games are planned for FunOrb, these are Bachelor Fridge, FunOrb Central, Dungeon Assualt 2, Steel sentinels, Pirate empires and one unnamed game. *MechScape is a planned future Jagex game. It is mainly covered by the MechScape wiki and I think it’s coming soon! *ThirdScape (not the official name just the name given by fans) was Jagex’s planned third scape game for 2010. *Recently in an interview Jagex said that ThirdScape was to be merged with RuneScape however we don’t know how far this will be. *Jagex has copyrighted StellarDawn and StellarDawn.com usually redirects to the FunOrb site however recently it was changed to some sort of mix between RuneScape and FunOrb. *Vegascape.com was also bought by Jagex and redirects to RuneScape. *Before FunOrb was created a mock up of the Jagex site came out and it listed Fun orbs. It also listed Space Combat and Force Fighter which may have been early names for MechScape and ThirdScape. Well thanks for reading, sorry if it’s not up to date with the events of the past week, I haven’t had any connection for ages and I haven’t had the chance to check for other things yet. Please leave lots of comments (preferably nice ones =]). 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